Joseph Wambaugh's second
nonfiction book,
Lines and Shadows is the story of a small group of
San Diego police officers in the late 1970's --
B.A.R.F., the Border Alien Robbery Force. The "Barfers" (as they came to call themselves) were the vision of
Dick Snider, a
Lieutenant and ex-
Border Patrolman who realizes that the border is an invisible line between two economies, and the
pollos crossing that line deserve to be protected from the
bandits and
rapists who prey on them when they first enter the
land of silk and money.
Under the leadership of the amazingly charismatic and ballsy Manny Lopez, the Barfers take a rapid turn away from being mere cops, and become, in Wambaugh's words, "The last of the hardball, cactus-stuck, worm-chewing, chili-sucking, skiull-crunching, bandit-busting, ball-clanging Gunslingers in the West." Humans were never meant to embody legends, and this is two stories. One takes place on the border, on the invisible line between two economies. The other takes place on that other invisible line between sanity and madness, as the Barfers begin to believe in their own bullshit, in the Legend, in Manny's seeming invulnerability. Marriages crumble, friends become enemies, and eventually the B.A.R.F. is disbanded. The Barfers go their own ways, scarred and bloody.
The border remains to this day.